Publisher's Synopsis
Chinese poetics has a long, long history. In the wake of the Classic of Poetry and the Chu Ci (Songs of the South) - the seminal works of classical Chinese poetry - a strong and constant current of change and transformation has characterized poetics in China. Situated in the middle of this surging, shifting current, Song dynasty poetics integrated the elegant richness of Tang poetry with the cultural and literary achievements of the Tang-period Classical Prose Movement, in a philosophy of poetics that stands at the summit of enlightened humanism. The "Jiangxi School" was a powerful literary collective that long held sway in Song dynasty poetry circles; moreover, the school's distinctive concepts and creative paradigms played a pivotal role in the development and evolution of Chinese poetics. This study attempts to construct a Gestalt understanding, taking the Jiangxi School as a model, it revolves around Tang-Song poetics disputes, competing concepts, aesthetic ideologies, artistic forms, and cultural influences, integrating research findings from a multiplicity of sources to establish a comprehensive interpretation of Song poetics; thus, an organic and dynamic link between Tang and Song poetry - a crucial phase in the development of Chinese poetics - is reestablished. The following outlines a conceptual "paradigm " to serve as a framework for constructing a historical interpretation of the Jiangxi School: 1. The Jiangxi School is a "paradigm," a "conceptual box" for the entirety of Song dynasty poetics. 2. "Semiotic aesthetics"("philosophy of symbolic forms") is the essence of this conceptual box. 3.Song poets employed a method of "mental cultivation" to put this "semiotic" expression into practice; "mental cultivation" denotes a cognitive framework of tacit knowledge and understanding. 4. Originating in the humanist thought of the Middle Tang period's "Classical Prose Movement," "the conceptual box" integrates the movement's cultural and literary achievements. 5. Huang Tingjian was the Jiangxi School's standard-bearer. Huang's poetics successfully responded to historical circumstances, thus constructing the "conceptual box." 6. Lü Benzhong's "A Diagram of the Jiangxi Poetry Society's Ancestors and Branches" named the model, thus the paradigm took shape. Furthermore, Lü refined and clarified the model by means of two theories, huofa ("tacit methodology") and wuru ("ultimate epiphany"), enabling Jiangxi poetics to become a network in which culture and society participate. Thus Huang Tingjian's responses to historical challenges were freed to gain appreciation in poetry circles. 7. At the same time, the model's naming was the beginning of standardization and concretion. Subsequently, a great number of theoretical norms are derived, abstracted and alienated under the name of the Jiangxi School. 8. This was the most important aspect of the transformation: owing to adhering to textualism, some poetic principles were isolated from the whole of the paradigm, giving rise to stylistic framework such as the "Jiangxi Style" and the "Jiangxi Form." In addition, the Jiangxi model, which had originally centered on Huang Tingjian, began to move toward "Du Poetics," theories drawn from Du Fu's poetry, and "Du-Huang Poetics," a literary course based on the formulations of both Du Fu and Huang Tingjian.
